Nikkei 225

Japan's premier stock market index, tracking 225 large-cap companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. First calculated in 1950, the Nikkei is price-weighted (like the Dow Jones Industrial Average) rather than market-cap-weighted. The index reached its all-time high of 38,957 on December 29, 1989, at the peak of the Japanese asset bubble, and then embarked on a devastating multi-decade bear market. It finally surpassed that level in early 2024, making it one of the most dramatic examples of how long markets can take to recover from a speculative mania.